The development of printed circuit boards (PCBs) has allowed various electronic components, such as resistors, diodes, integrated circuits (IC) and central processing units (CPUs), to be easily connected onto a single structure. PCBs include prefabricated circuits, which are known as “conductor patterns,” that provide electrical connections between the electronic components mounted on the PCBs. Depending on the conductor patterns and the mounted electronic components, PCBs may be used in more than one application. Consequently, PCBs can be customized by mounting different electronic components on the PCB.
Electronic components may be mounted on a PCB by soldering the components onto the PCB. On a single-sided PCB, the conductor patterns are fabricated on one side of the PCB and the electronic components are mounted on the opposite side. The electronic components suitable for mounting on PCBs typically include electrically conductive pins that protrude in one direction. The electronic components are mounted on the PCB by inserting the pins of the electronic components through the PCB and then soldering the pins to the conductor patterns. Thus, the mounted electronic components are electrically connected to the conductor patterns of the PCB. The soldering of electronic components to the conductor patterns of a PCB provides an effective method to mount the components onto the PCB and to electrically connect the components to the PCB. However, the soldering method does not allow the mounted electronic components to be easily removed from the PCB.
In order to overcome the difficulty in removing soldered electronic components from PCBs, some PCBs include sockets that are attached to the PCBs and connected to the respective conductor patterns. The sockets are receptacles into which pins of electronic components can be inserted to mount the components to the PCBs. An example of a socket is a Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket, which is commonly used to mount a CPU onto a PCB. When an electronic component is inserted into a socket, the pins of the electronic component are electrically connected to the conductor patterns of the PCB through the socket. The electronic component can then be easily removed from the PCB by pulling out the pins of the component from the socket. The electronic component can be remounted to the original PCB or mounted to a different PCB by inserting the pins of the component into the respective socket.
The use of sockets allows electronic components to be electrically connected to and disconnected from PCBs with relative ease. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent mechanism that allows optical components to be optically connected to and disconnected from optical circuit boards (OCBs) with similar ease. OCBs can be viewed as the optical equivalents of PCBs. Similar to the conductor patterns on PCBs, OCBs include waveguides that can be optically connected to various optical components to optically interconnect the optical components. Typically, an optical component is optically connected to an OCB by physically attaching one or more waveguides of the component to the desired waveguides of the OCB by using an adhesive material, such as epoxy. Alternatively, an optical component is optically connected to an OCB by mechanically abutting polished ends of waveguides, and then fixing the waveguides in place. A concern with these prior art methods to optically connect optical components to OCBs is that the optical components cannot be easily connected to and disconnected from the OCBs.
In view of this concern, what is needed is a re-connectable optical interface system and method for optically interconnecting and disconnecting optical devices, such as optical components and OCBs, with relative ease.